The World in a Ball of Glass
by Annwyd
Summary: His body works imperfectly. His mind is still a mess. Shirou recovers, and he tries to make sense of it all. Set after Heaven's Feel, true ending.


It takes him a day to start remembering Sakura's name, and it's a week before he tries to cook for her again.

By then he remembers other things as well. "Fuji-nee" he remembers, though he only sometimes can piece together the rest of the name around it, or why he can't explain everything to her. He remembers what Rider is, although he hasn't fully grasped why she's still around, and he knows that the dark-haired girl is important to both him and Sakura, although he remembers that her name is Tohsaka only in fits and starts.

"If you break this body too I won't show you any mercy, Emiya-kun," she told him on the second day. He's still not sure why she calls him that, because his name is Shirou. He's known that from the start. Why he's called Emiya as well trickles back to him in bits and pieces. He hasn't gotten all of it yet, but sometimes a gentle and weary man's face comes to mind when he looks around this house.

Mostly, what comes to mind when he looks around this house is the scent of the food he and Sakura have cooked. So he's impatient to cook it for her again, and after a week, he throws caution to the wind and makes his way slowly to the kitchen.

He only realizes once he's at the counter that his vision keeps cutting in and out when he tries to assemble the ingredients. His fingers don't grasp properly. His whole body reminds him of a projection he used to make: perfect on the outside, but hollow on the inside. It's hard to remember that, though, because he doesn't feel hollow. So long as he's in this house and remembers his name and Sakura's smile, he doesn't feel hollow at all.

Unfortunately, that doesn't stop him from blacking out at the kitchen counter as he tries to chop vegetables. They're the wrong vegetables for this recipe, too.

* * *

"Senpai?" Sakura finds him. "Senpai, you are absolutely not allowed to use knives right now, not even for cooking! I forbid it, and Rider will enforce it!"

She makes him go back to his room.

Two hours later, Tohsaka arrives, her head held high to mask the worry in her eyes. He can remember her name right now, but even if he couldn't, he could see the worry in her eyes. "Emiya-kun, it's okay that you're this stupid because that's just who you are, but you can't be this clumsy too." That's her decree.

She decides that if he practices with his magic circuit, he may be able to strengthen his soul's connection to the container that now serves as his body and so move about and act more easily. She brings materials for him to practice on, and then she leaves with a toss of her hair behind her.

He should practice on the substances she brings for him to reinforce, but something strange happens: he's distracted. It's easy to distract him right now.

Tohsaka brought a lamp into his room so he could have light while he practices his magecraft. The funny thing is, even with the light, he can't focus on the magical materials he's supposed to use for practice. They slide shapelessly out of his fumbling hands.

After a while, he finds himself staring blankly at the light instead. Something about it seems sad to him.

Shirou touches the lightbulb, frowning a little at the small pain of the heat on his fingertips. He lets its structure unfold in his mind's eye, perfect and empty.

"It isn't right," he mutters. "It's bright but it's got almost nothing in it."

It isn't right that something can shine like that, giving light to all who need it, and be empty inside except for such a thin and fragile filament. So he does what seems natural, with his mind still a bit hazy, full of salvaged pieces that haven't fully fitted back together, and his body a stuttering shell. He ignores the specialized substances Tohsaka left him, and he reinforces the lightbulb.

The filament within it blazes brightly. He grins at how it almost seems like it isn't empty. Then the whole thing shatters, and consciousness abruptly eludes him as the magecraft jars his soul inside his imperfect body.

* * *

Images wander through his head. The empty lightbulb, cracks racing in slow motion through its thin glass exterior. The Greater Grail, casting darkness all around it even as it crumbles. The snap of a tooth cracking as he grinds down on it in frustration while his ideals fall apart. How many weeks ago was that? He's seen so much more than ideals fall apart now.

Someone is wrapping up his bloodied hand. He cannot speak to her, though; his mouth is disconnected like it's unplugged. Sometimes that happens now. So he can only listen.

"I saw what you did." Her hands that once wielded chains and daggers move the bandages without problem. "Please remember. You were never the light. You would have seen Sakura's pain much sooner if you were. If you truly cast light like that. But it's impossible. A modern lamp is a like a miracle of technology: it does something people cannot. Empty people can only see their own emptiness, and try to fill it."

Rider ties off the bandages and rises to her full elegant height to go. "You cast light for Sakura now as well as for yourself, like an old lamp of flame. Burn well, Shirou."

* * *

Tears are falling on his hand. The bandages are getting wet.

"Sakura," he murmurs weakly. "Don't cry. We'll get a new light."

She kneels at his side in the darkness. The tears still fall. "I'm not crying for the light, senpai. We've broken so much. We've broken so much that won't ever come back."

He thinks of what Rider said and nods a little, though the words he needs to say about it are too complicated for him to voice them right now with his clumsy tongue and lips. Instead he reaches out and squeezes her hand, and he says haltingly, "Everyone breaks things. We broke a lot. I'm still here."

Sakura wipes her eyes, lets go of his hands, and slowly leaves the room. He hears her footsteps recede, and then he hears her footsteps come back. When she opens the door, she is carrying a candle in a little tray.

She sets it down, and she kneels at his side. "I'm going to watch over you, senpai," she says. Her face is composed again. There are no more tears. "Neither of us will break anything more tonight."

Behind her, the flame from the candle flickers and dances like a living thing. It's harder to see her face than it would be if he hadn't broken the light. Tomorrow, or the next day, someone will get a new modern lamp, with a proper lightbulb. But tonight, in the candlelight, Sakura holds his injured hand and strokes his face, and she looks just as alive as the flame.

Shirou can see her face well enough this way too.


End file.
